Originally Posted by Elwro
I'm not backing a project whose developer advertises it by saying "it's turn-based like Dungeon Master". This is completely ridiculous, this is like a writer saying that his book is a serious drama about love in Victorian times, just like Pratchett's "The Colour of Magic".

Basic incompetence.

You might think they would also have been aware that Dungeon Master was a four character party RPG, not one with a single protagonist (see Kickstarter comments).

I like this project, I would definitely buy this game if I saw it in the store. but since the game is almost complete (he admitted) what do they need the extra money for? Yeah Yeah I heard what he said (artist, music etc.) but it's so late in the development, it has me wondering.

@jhwisner
You might refer to my post there, but all I wanted to do is to make clear you shouldn't throw you money blindly to any project

About the Turn based stuff:
I think in Update 10 he made it very clear what he means by turn based and how the game will work.
The Game will work in a "I do, you do" manner. I don't know if Dungeon Master worked that way.
The way the game works it pretty rare and the only other Game where I remember this way was used is Eschalon II.

Basically if you are standing still and do nothing the game will not progress at all.
If you have an empty tile infront of you and a tile after that is an enemy and do nothing, nothing will happen. So even if you go fetch a coffe, the enemy will still be standing at the same spot. Now as soon as you would move away to gain an additional tile of distance, the enemy would move, keeping the distance at one tile.
Or lets say you shoot something at the enemy, then the enemy would make it's move and be in melee range.
But all the processes will appear fluent. There is no "end turn" button or something like that.
I looked up a scene in Eschalon footage where you can see this "turn based" system in action. You will see that it does not look like turn based at all. But it still is, and not just in the background. This however only works that fluently if you have only one character to control.

@Dajjer
They don't need it. But these days it's somewhat stupid to not take the extra money and the extra publicity from kickstarter. And it helps to make the game even better.
Xenonauts is an additional example. They pobably would not have needed kickstarter at all. But as there is no negative side-effect (I can think of) for the project…

The game is generally applying Roguelike concepts folks, as per that last video update—-just taking a crack at a different perspective and sprinkling in some familiar calling cards back to EoB and other such tile based games given the recent resurgence thanks in large part to Legend of Grimrock.

I reckon they've got a good thing going, and have certainly been at it for awhile now.

The dev openly admits (in the comments and videos) he has trouble explaining things clearly sometimes. I think he is referencing Dungeon Master mainly in the grid-based, 1st-person view aspect, not claiming DM had turn-based combat.

From what I understand, Kordanor and getter77 described well the type of turn system they are using (exactly like Rogue, Nethack, etc..). This is explained in recent videos from the dev.

I think they also add in more RPG elements such as NPCs, quests and story elements which roguelikes don't often have.

As for the lack of a party - he mentioned in some comments that will possibly be something they pursue in the sequel. I agree a party would be preferred but understand that they are too far along at this point to totally change the character system.

On the money subject - I think asking $6000 (their original goal) for resources to polish the game is totally reasonable. Artists and art assets cost a lot of money, and honestly that figure is pretty low. The visual area is the part I think needs the most work, based on their videos.

I think this game looks amazing. Almost the definition of the perfect game I've always wanted. Yeah the dev does seem to be a little floozy about explaining stuff, but I think their numerous vids speak for themselves.

Originally Posted by regomar
I think this game looks amazing. Almost the definition of the perfect game I've always wanted. Yeah the dev does seem to be a little floozy about explaining stuff, but I think their numerous vids speak for themselves.

Agreed - the reason I tend to cheer this one on so much is that it's a game concept I've wanted to see for a long time. I've even thought before about making this type of game myself. Now I don't have to!

I think part of the confusing thing about the games he references is that his game is not a straight-up clone of any one of those games. It merely draws elements from all of them. Dwarf Fortress for its procedural approach to world-building, Dungeon Master / EotB / Might & Magic for their 1st-person viewport and grid-based movement, etc. He never claims the game will actually play like Dwarf Fortress, or have a party like Might & Magic.

Originally Posted by stealth
Isn't DM still sort of turn based though? I know it is not like JA or X-COM which some might consider being true turn based.

Nope, it makes no sense to call DM "turn-based". All movement and combat (the player's as well as his or her enemies) takes place in real time; there's nothing sequential about it at all. If you stand still and do nothing (like you could in a turn-based game because inaction would essentially freeze time) you will either be killed or starve to death by ever-increasing hunger.

So they procedually generate the same world for every player? that's what I conclude with not random and infinite….. random for computer does have the meaning of using a seed such as the time, or players mouse movements, or HD-reads or whatever. Actually it also means the same thing in the real world….. if you throw a set of dice the result is not random either. it's just an effect of the amount of force you apply, the current wind strenght, weight of the dice and so on…..

I don't get why they'd like to procedually generate the same world for every player. When you start a new game… you always get the same world so that's not fun… and you don't get the benefit of manually placed great things either….. have to say it sounds really weird

- From what I understand it works like this: The world is procedurally generated to infinity (as you travel, I guess) - but your starting placement in that world will change for each character you make. Similarly, each player will start in a different area. So you could end up several thousand miles from your previous character's location, with effectively a very different area to explore.

The idea behind it is to have persistence, so maybe one day your new character finds the corpse of your old one out in the wilds, or something like that. The dev said you could tell your friends about cool locations you found, and they'd be able to find them if they travel to the right coordinates.

I don't see why they couldn't have the option to have a whole new world generated though, if someone preferred that.

and you don't get the benefit of manually placed great things either….. have to say it sounds really weird

I think a procedurally generated world does not necessarily exclude "manually placed things".
And they also said that the world will include story.
I guess this can be explained in two different ways:
Some things are set fix, and the world is procedurally generated around them.
Or
The procedure knows that the element must be used with high priotiy and must not be used more than once.

Besides that the procedure might take one of 5 hand crafted "modules".
It will probably not throw everything together individually, ending with houses standing all around in the world with the same density if you know what I mean.
I am pretty sure it will use modules or "blocks" like you saw in Diablo 1 for example.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yep. But you can't have Gandalf standing at each house telling you to destroy the ring. So I guess they have some other solution for that.

Hmm maybe they spawn important quest NPCs in your vicinity so it's more likely you'll find them. I dunno - just speculating. I haven't read much in-depth about the quest / story stuff they have going on yet.

By the way, anyone interested in this game should check out their development blog. It goes into depth on a lot of technical areas and the procedural techniques. Interesting stuff, and they might have answers to questions like that somewhere in there. I haven't read through all the posts yet (they go back to 2010).

Originally Posted by Elwro
I'm not talking about plagiarism. Their game cannot be "turn-based like Dungeon Master", because Dungeon Master wasn't turn-based, and it's one of the basic facts anyone developing a dungeon crawling game should know.

ah, good point then. also shows that I never read "The Colour of Magic" lol. not sure which gap I should fill in first now — Colour of Magic or Dungeon Master XD

Originally Posted by choovuck
ah, good point then. also shows that I never read "The Colour of Magic" lol. not sure which gap I should fill in first now — Colour of Magic or Dungeon Master XD

You should fill both of the gaps

And to the other folks:

1) if the game really works in the way you described, than fine, I'd say it's a very nice concept and I'd consider backing it, but the dev simply made an unfortunate blunder when he said it's "turn-based like DM" at the beginning of the trailer: the system you describe is of course nothing like DM. (Even if, who knows, it might make for a better game and should definitely be advertised )

2) notice that in terms of action system Eschalon is more akin to roguelikes than to traditional "turn based" games like Gold Box, Dark Sun or Fallout… it's (almost) universally "I move one square, you move one square".

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yep. But you can't have Gandalf standing at each house telling you to destroy the ring. So I guess they have some other solution for that.

The quests are procedurally generated too. They have a "Kevin Bacon" system (I know someone who knows someone who knows Kevin Bacon) that propagates knowledge of quests into the surrounding area around them - which is quite an interesting idea; and It's quite similar to what Bethesda did in the first Elder Scrolls (Arena).

Whether all this procedural stuff will make the game feel a bit generic I'm not sure. Think its interesting, but I'd probably prefer to actually play something a bit more hand crafted.